Phantom of Riverside Park

by Peggy Webb

  “I slept late,” Papa said, coming into the kitchen. “Good thing I smelled the coffee or I might have lollygagged in bed all day.” He joined her at the window, then froze. “Sweet Jesus,” he whispered.

  Elizabeth felt like dropping straight to her knees on the kitchen floor and thanking God that Papa had seen David at a distance before meeting him face to face. His reaction would have lacerated David’s soul.

  She put her hand on his arm. “Papa, he can’t stand pity. You mustn’t let him see it.”

  “It’s not pity, Elizabeth, it’s gratitude. Dear lord in heaven, what that man sacrificed for his country, for all of us.” Papa stretched his neck the way he always did when he was getting ready to defend somebody. “That man out there in the yard is a genuine hero, and I intend to go out there and tell him so. I intend to shake his hand and say, thank you, soldier.”

  “I love you, Papa.”

  “Never thought you didn’t. Not for a minute. Now I reckon I better have a cup of coffee to settle my nerves a bit. I don’t want to go out there and make a fool of myself.”

  o0o

  With judicious use of his pocket knife and some duct tape he’d found in the garage, David had turned the cardboard box into a reasonable facsimile of a race car. Nicky marched around twice, inspecting it and nodding his satisfaction.

  Suddenly he cocked his head and eyed David. “Can that mean lady find me?”

  “What mean lady?” The sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach told David he already knew the answer.

  “The one who taked me away from Mommy.”

  David wanted to hit something. Hard. “No. She can’t find you.”

  Nicky nodded, solemn and much too wise for a four-year-old. “Good. ‘Cause if she comes I’m gonna run away in my race car an’ she can’t catch me.”

  David wanted to gather the little boy into his arms and say I’ll never let them take you away again, but he knew better than to make promises to Nicky that he might not be able to keep. To a child, promises are sacred.

  He couldn’t even say, I’m doing everything in my power to see that you never have to leave your mommy again. A four-year-old child shouldn’t have to hear about a legal battle brought on by adults who should know better.

  Instead he said, “That’s a very good idea.”

  Nicky smiled, then climbed into his race car and made revving motor sounds which ceased abruptly. “Hey, Papa! Come see my race car. Me an’ David maked it.”

  “In a minute, Nicky. First I have to say hello to your new friend.”

  Totally unprepared, David turned to face Elizabeth’s grandfather. The old man came toward him, upright and spry, smiling as he held out his hand.

  “I’m Elizabeth’s grandfather, Thomas Jennings.”

  “David Lassiter.” The old man’s handshake was firm, and his eyes held David’s without wavering.

  “I served in the trenches in the Great War, son, and as one soldier to another, I just want to say thank you.”

  “Thank you, sir. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  David told the truth. It was funny how the thing he had dreaded had turned out to be not only painless but pleasant. Funny as well as scary.

  There was too much to love about Elizabeth and her family, too much to lull a man into a false sense of security, too much to make a man believe that a temporary agreement might last forever. David couldn’t afford to fool himself. Elizabeth would stay till the case was settled, and then she’d be out of his life.

  But she held me in her arms.

  There is a place in all of us where hope refuses to die. That place in David whispered that maybe everything would work out all right, maybe he didn’t have to let Elizabeth go, maybe having let him into her bed she might let him into her heart.

  Logic, that stern gatekeeper, rose up his ugly head and said no way. David was fooling nobody but himself. What Elizabeth was feeling right now was gratitude, plain and simple. True, she might stay for a while, but then she’d start feeling trapped and betrayed. She’d grow to hate him.

  Too many people had already taken advantage of Elizabeth. He wasn’t going to add his name to the list.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  David was avoiding her, and that’s all there was to it.

  She hadn’t seen him since mid-morning when he’d emerged from the backyard with Papa and Nicky to announce they were going fishing. She’d half-way expected an invitation, and when it hadn’t come she’d thought they might have lunch together, but Papa and Nicky had returned alone.

  Then Elizabeth had latched onto the notion of having a family dinner with David at the head of the table carving the roast. She would light candles. She’d wear blue.

  As a matter of fact, she was wearing blue in spite of the fact that David never showed his face.

  What she’d done, of course, was take one night and build a whole future around it. Call her old-fashioned. Call her a chip off Mae Mae’s block. For Elizabeth, intimacy meant commitment.

  Maybe David had his reasons for avoiding her, but that didn’t make her feel a bit better.

  Elizabeth went looking for McKenzie and found her in the library surrounded by liquor bottles.

  “Come in, Elizabeth. Join me in a small libation.”

  “What are you having?”

  Elizabeth didn’t drink much, but the idea of it all suddenly had great appeal. Anesthesia in a bottle. Instant forgetfulness. The custody case, gone. The threat of losing Nicky, vanished. Papa’s illness, poof. David’s screaming absence, disappeared.

  “Vodka and cranberry juice. It’s good for your kidneys.”

  “Great. Let’s cure our kidneys and pickle our livers. I’m in that kind of mood.”

  McKenzie didn’t even ask what kind. Friends don’t have to ask.

  “So am I,” she said, and when Elizabeth got close she could see the mascara streaked on McKenzie’s cheeks. She didn’t ask why. McKenzie would tell it all in her own good time.

  McKenzie poured her a drink, and she kicked off her shoes and curled up in a chair opposite David’s sister.

  “You look pretty in that blue dress, Elizabeth. I hope you wore it for David, and I hope he was bowled over.”

  “I did, and he wasn’t. I haven’t seen him since morning.”

  “Men. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em.” McKenzie drained her glass, then fixed herself another drink.

  “I wouldn’t know. And from the looks of things I’m never going to get to find out.” Elizabeth was horrified at her confession. Drink had loosened her tongue, otherwise she wouldn’t be sitting there pouring out her secret heart to David’s sister. Some things ought to be kept private.

  Except on certain occasions. Occasions like this when the night made you lonely and the drink made you sad.

  “Do you think David is ever going to let anybody get close?” she asked, meaning herself, of course. It was a bold and outrageous thing to say considering the circumstances, considering she was hardly more than a guest in that house, somebody just passing through.

  “Let me tell you about my brother.” McKenzie refilled her glass. “He was engaged before Iraq, sort of, to this little twit who thought Puccini was a foreign sports car. Japanese, for Pete’s sake.”

  Elizabeth doubled over laughing. Taylor might have thought her cotton patch trash, but she knew her opera. Loved it, too.

  “David loved her anyhow. He always had the ability to see beyond a person’s faults, which is a good thing or he’d have kicked me out years ago.”

  It wasn’t like McKenzie to put herself down. She must really be in a dark mood.

  “Before everything that happened to him over there,” McKenzie continued, meaning the war, “he used to go around the house singing. Always the song Daddy loved. Nearly drove us all crazy.” McKenzie threw back her head, lowered her voice an octave in imitation of her brother and belted out “Blueberry Hill”.

  Elizabeth’s hand flew to her throat. Had Nicky heard the s
ong from David? Could it be possible? She thought back to the first time he’d used the song. It had been shortly after he returned from the hospital.

  “Are you sure that’s the only song he sings?”

  “Yes. I sound awful, but he actually sounded great. He had a wonderful voice. Still does, I suppose. I don’t ever hear him singing anymore. And did I tell you how beautiful he was? David was one of the most gorgeous human beings who ever walked the face of the earth. People used to stop and stare at him. Perfect strangers. Just stopped dead in their tracks to gawk at my beautiful, flawless brother.”

  The power of loss to bring us to our knees is scary. Elizabeth passed her empty glass to McKenzie to soften the edges of the sharp pain she felt, not only for David but for herself as well. For the whole human race. That’s how big her social conscience expanded. Too big for a small lonely woman to bear.

  “What happened to the engagement?” Elizabeth had to ask, although she thought she already knew.

  “He was in the hospital. They’d fixed part of the damage. He was feeling pretty good about it all, about the future, looking forward to seeing Kelly Lynn again. And then she came, bearing roses.” McKenzie stopped talking and took a long swig. “She took one look at my brother and ran from the room screaming.”

  “Oh...” Elizabeth hurt for him. Tears ran down her cheeks and plopped into her drink. Her third. And the pain still wouldn’t go away.

  “David didn’t tell me. The nurses did. I told them if she ever showed her painted face again to throw the shallow witch out. They said they looked forward to it, but they never got the pleasure. Of course, Kelly Lynn never came back.”

  Elizabeth held out her empty glass, and Mckenzie fixed them both a refill.

  “Love.” McKenzie clinked her glass to Elizabeth’s. “Ain’t it grand?”

  “Not from where I’m sitting.” Elizabeth was slurring her words, and McKenzie was turning fuzzy around the edges.

  “Me neither.” McKenzie pressed her glass to her cheek. “Oh, God, why does everything have to be so confusing? Why can’t we all be born with life maps and extra-sensory perception?”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I guess you’re drunk enough now that I can tell you.”

  “Who? Me?” Elizabeth hiccupped, then lifted her glass. “Down the hole.”

  “I think the word is hatch.”

  “How would you know? You’ve had too much to drink. How come?”

  “I went down to the river to talk to David, and all of a sudden I looked at Peter, really looked, and I got this little twinge. The kind you get when you’ve stuck your finger in the electric socket, you know.”

  How well Elizabeth knew. Except with David it was more like sticking her whole self into the path of a lightning bolt.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “I didn’t believe it, either. He’s younger than my tennis shoes, and nothing like Paul.”

  Elizabeth thought of the age gap between her and David and wondered if that was what was keeping him away. Or could it be something else? Maybe she’d been terrible last night, inadequate somehow, and he couldn’t bear to tell her to her face.

  A thousand maybes raced through her mind. She could rationalize till she was blue in the face, and still she wouldn’t know the truth.

  She wondered what Mae Mae would do in a situation like this. Probably slam a few pots and pans around, maybe play a lively tune on the piano, pounding the keys so hard you could hear her clear out to the front porch. Then she’d get up and march straight up to the person who was confusing her and say, spit it out, and I want the truth, too, not some silly made-up story.

  Elizabeth probably wouldn’t march up and confront David even if she knew where he was. She was scared of what he might tell her. What if he said, I made a mistake last night, I just didn’t feel any sparks, and then left her to pick up the pieces. There’s only so much of that a woman can do.

  Over the last few years she’d picked up so many pieces of herself and patched them back together there soon wouldn’t be anything left of her to pick up.

  “Feelings can be scary,” Elizabeth said.

  McKenzie put her hand over her face. “I’m so scared I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to feel again. It hurts too much.”

  Elizabeth started crying, crying for herself and David, crying for McKenzie, crying for unrequited love everywhere.

  She downed the rest of her glass. “What you need is sheering up.”

  They stared at each other, and McKenzie began to laugh. “You look like you could use a little sheering up yourself.” She put the lampshade on her head, stood on the chair and held the vodka bottle aloft. “Give me your tired, your poor, your wretched masses yearning to be free...”

  o0o

  It was nearly midnight when David got back to the farm. Everybody would be in bed, meaning Elizabeth, of course. He could slip into his bedroom unnoticed and spend one more sleepless night, then he could leave. After the party tomorrow he could go back to Memphis and spare himself the pain of being in the company of a woman he couldn’t have.

  He let himself into the front door expecting to be greeted with the peace and quiet of a sleeping household. Instead he was greeted by the statue of liberty. He could see McKenzie through the open door of the library, standing on her chair holding forth.

  “Get down from there before you break your neck.”

  “Home is the hunter, home from the hill.” She grinned at him. “Hi, big brother.” She stepped down and plopped the bottle on the table. “I was just trying to cheer her up.”

  That’s when he saw Elizabeth, slumped into the wingchair, fast asleep. Or was she? She had the too-flushed look of a woman who should never have more than one drink.

  “Did you get her drunk, McKenzie?”

  “She did it all by herself. Poor little thing. She dressed for you, and you never showed up. She was broken-hearted.”

  For a wild heart-thumping moment, David believed her. He squatted beside Elizabeth’s chair to check her pulse. Once he’d touched her, he couldn’t seem to get enough. He smoothed back her damp hair, wiped a smudge of mascara off her cheek.

  “Why don’t you tell her you love her, David?”

  He moved toward the French windows like somebody who had been shot from a cannon. Desperate to get away from temptation. Desperate to change the subject.

  Not to be daunted, McKenzie followed him. “What happened between the two of you last night?”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “She said the two of you talked.”

  “We talked.”

  “And what else?”

  “That comes under the category of none of your business.”

  “Aha!” His sister gave him a look of wicked glee while the clock in the hallway bonged half-past midnight. “I need some beauty sleep, I need a total body makeover, I need a miracle.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed him goodnight. “I’m going to bed, big brother. Sweet dreams.”

  As his sister floated past Elizabeth sleeping in her chair, David realized he was being left alone with her.

  “Hey, wait a minute.”

  McKenzie only laughed at him. “She’s your wife, David. You take care of her.”

  He couldn’t leave Elizabeth wadded into a chair all night. There was only one thing to do. She was as light as a child in his arms, but there was nothing childlike about the way she felt.

  As David climbed the stairs with his sleeping wife, he thought of the staircase scene in “Gone with the Wind,” the scene where Rhett Butler carries Scarlett into her bedroom, and then the scene the following morning where Scarlett wakes up humming. He fantasized himself as Rhett, fantasized being in Elizabeth’s bed once more, fantasized about being the kind of man who could make a woman wake up smiling and singing to herself.

  That sort of thing only happened in the movies, of course. This was real life, and David would never be a leading man. With Elizabeth in his arms it was easy to d
ream of the impossible, especially late at night with the shroud of darkness to hide him.

  He shouldered open her door and laid her gently on the big canopied bed. She looked like a fallen flower. So fragile, so vulnerable, and so very beautiful.

  The mattress sank under his weight. Careful not to wake her, he lifted one of her soft hands and kissed each pink fingertip, each small knuckle. Then he turned her hand over and pressed his lips into her warm moist palm.

  So this is what it’s like to love a woman.

  The moon laid a path from the window to the bed, and Elizabeth lay in its center, luminous. And deeply sleeping. He could kiss her, touch her, and she would never know. But that would make him little more than a thief, stealing something whose true worth lay in the freedom with which it was given.

  David covered her with a blanket. “Sweet dreams, Elizabeth,” he whispered, then he went into his own room and closed the connecting door.

  He didn’t think he would sleep, but he must have, for when the door eased open, he jerked awake. Elizabeth was coming to him. He held his breath, waiting.

  “David?” It was a small voice, followed by Nicky’s small form. “Can I sleep wif’ you? Bear’s scared.”

  “Sure, pal.” He turned back the covers, and the little boy climbed in beside him and curved close like a tiny question mark. David’s heart grew two sizes.

  “Mommy won’t wake up. Can you sing a song so’s me’n Bear’ll feel all better?”

  David sang the only song he knew, and beside him, Nicky sighed.

  “That’s my fabewrit song.”

  “Mine, too.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  When Elizabeth woke up at six o’clock in the morning and discovered she was sleeping with her dress on she knew darned well she hadn’t climbed up the stairs and tucked herself in. David had done it. It had to be him. Last night McKenzie hadn’t been in much better condition than she was.

  Elizabeth pictured how it had been: he had picked her up without any effort at all because he was a big man and big men had no trouble hefting small packages, and then he just walked up the stairs and dumped her like a sack of potatoes and went his merry way. As if they’d never spent the night in each other’s arms while the moon shone through the bedroom window.